12 Responses to “Concrete Solution for Climate?”

Maybe the reduced use of cement will help with another problem. Coincidentally, I heard an interview yesterday on NPR about the importance of using the proper kind of sand in concrete, and we are running out of easily accessible supplies. Look up :

The Story Of Sand In ‘The World In A Grain’, interview on Sunday Weekend Edition with author Vince Beiser

According to a study in the Journal of Sustainable Forestry, substituting wood for other materials used in buildings and bridges could prevent 14 to 31 percent of global carbon emissions. (This assumes that forests regrow, and that wood is reused or disposed of responsibly at the end of a structure’s life.)

The video, which is otherwise great, assumes that above all we must must must preserve capitalism. When expressed as a belief, conscious or un, (and it’s mostly un) in the debate over what to do about climate catastrophe, it results in the popular carbon price meme as the only thing we can do, given political reality. But it neglects to consider not only that political reality is not real, and false perceptions of it have to yield to physical, ecological and psychological reality, but also that simply putting a price on carbon is
1. woefully inadequate without massive and more important other actions,
2. what many peri-center people consider a bribe to get the far right to accept the reality of climate science, when actually a carbon price is more likely a trap conservatives and fossil fuel corporations are laying for naive climate activist wannabes, and
3. reinforcing the economics and capitalism über alles frame that’s one of the chief symptoms of the hyper-conservative Wetiko disease–the belief in the individual above all, that dominates our society and is causing this crisis.

If we want civilization and most life on Earth to survive, we have to free ourselves from that restrictive assumption and the psychological, social and political conditions that cause it.

Jeffy thinks this video is “great”? When it’s titled “traps CO2 FOREVER”? Nothing on this planet is “forever”, Jeffy. The video is slick and attention-getting, though, particularly in the amount of time devoted to shots of shapely women walking around in form-fitting jeans. Objectification anyone? (I especially liked the Sports Illustrated shot of the perky and cute reporter perched on some concrete near the end. She made the clip for me—-sort of a younger and tamer Sophia Vergara.

Jeffy doesn’t let that distract him from his usual garrulous but vapid rant, though. Peri-centers and restrictive assumptions, woefully inadequate without massive and more important OTHER actions?…….ZZZZZzzzzzz…….!!!!!

This story must be a hoax. You can never embed the amount of CO2 in the concrete that it takes to burn the cement. And what? “CO2 makes concrete stronger”? How does that work? CO2 and water make carbonic acid which does indeed dissolve the concrete…

It’s not a hoax, Chucky. We know you haven’t got much science training, but this one is simple and you should know it

CO2 + water = carbonic acid is NOT the chemistry that is occurring or the Carbon Cure process relies on. The process is CO2 + calcium = calcium carbonate, which is the same as the naturally produced limestone that has sequestered so much CO2 at the bottom of the oceans over Earth’s long history.

Carbon Cure would help IF the concrete industry wasn’t so slow and hidebound. Right now, the company will install the CO2 injection free of charge at concrete plants—they then ask for a rebate of the $$$ that the concrete companies save by being able to reduce the amount of cement they use. Not a great business plan. It WOULD be more profitable for all IF there were a proper carbon tax in place though—-don’t hold your breath on that.

The concrete industry is about 5% of global emissions. If we do nothing about it, that will go up as we replace the fossil fuel infrastructure with efficiency and clean safe renewable energy. But we can prioritize some trivial, extravagant and destructive uses out of existence, (the US military?) use other materials for some uses. About 40% of the industry’s emissions is heat that can be supplied with renewable energy, and construction machinery will soon be electrified and renewablized, so it might make concrete jus 1-2% of current global emissions.
(Other emissions will have to be reduced at the same time so it’s hard to say what % of future emissions it will be. Even if it remains 5% of emissions for a while, if everything else is reduced by 80% we’ll be ahead.)

There are also many buildings made of cob, adobe and other mud formulas still standing after 800 years or more in wet, cold climates like England and Germany, and 3000 year-old structures in dry climates. Some stone houses are still standing after more than 5000 years. Concrete is not the only thing to build with.

Bunch of old bananas or building materials of the future?
11 October 2017
”About a third of food produced around the world is never eaten because it is spoiled after harvest and in transportation, or thrown away by shops and consumers.…common organic food waste such as bananas, potatoes and peanut shells could be refigured into building materials to cut food waste and lower carbon emissions.”
Countries such as India are pushing to create “green homes” while aluminium smelters are responding to the demands of regulators and developers to produce low-carbon materials.”http://news.trust.org/item/20171011160750-ab15p/

Jeffy continues to wallow around in his swamp of denial and bargaining with the fact of looming CAGW—-he just can’t accept the truth about its approach, and keeps alternating between wishful thinking about what we must do to stop it (immediately overturn just about everything about human society planet-wide) and silliness like “bunches of bananas”.

I’ll summarize it all for you again, Jeffy. Her’s why you are stuck in the Kubler-Ross progression and can’t get through to the other side.

1) There are far too many humans on the planet, and it cannot support the lifestyle that we have adopted.
2) Humans have evolved a level of intelligence achieved by no other species in the history of the planet. It has allowed us to develop and apply the technologies that make our numbers and lifestyle unsustainable.
3) The human species has proven itself incapable of thinking much beyond the here-and-now and planning for the future. We will not try to fix this problem until it’s probably too late.
4) Species extinction is the norm on the planet. If humans drive themselves to extinction, it will not be anything new in the history of life on Earth. You are likely to be among them.
5) Nature bats last, and has always won the game.

Finally, Jeffy, it’s OK for you to be struggling to deal with your feelings about this and the grief you feel—-it’s only “human”. (And please don’t respond with something as unproductive as you did the last rime I spoke these truths to you—-I refer to you telling me to kill myself to make room for people like you).